Best Albums of 2008: 10-6

 10. Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

Of Montreal’s Skeletal Lamping is the most delightful example of avantgard-pop creativity. Keeping indie relevant and showing off the cheerful side of pop-music art, Kevin Barnes, at least we hope, has many many more songs and albums to give birth to from the womb of his musical imagination. (Don’t worry, gonna drop the metaphor now.) I just love the pretended innocence, the half-smiling happiness and the naive atmosphere that surrounds the record and makes it one of the bests this year.

Of Montreal - An Eluardian Instance [zshare] // [ysi]

9. Bloc Party - Intimacy

This must come off as a strange choice but Bloc Party’s Intimacy just grew on me. First listen, I thought it sucks, second, I felt there’s something interesting, third, I wanted to hear it more times. Not an album of originality and not even the best indie-pop around but there’s something in the sensitivity and the intimacy (ooops…sorry) of the band’s attitude. I mean, there something touching in how they work with concepts related to relationships, love, loss, etcetc and sometimes it’s aggressive in heavy songs, sometimes it’s beautiful and dressed in weird electronic compositions and perfect lyrics.

Bloc Party - Biko [zshare] // [ysi]

8. Van She - V

2008 was unquestionably the year of Australian music. Many many artists from the brilliant Modular label emerged and made cool tracks and made the world listen to them. On of them is Van She who’s been around for a while but this proper debut is full of their best songs. Combining shoegazing and electronic sound, V breaks your heart and makes you wanna dance at the same time. Among the many cool electronic artists, Van She is one who can really create songs like a real band. The start of Memory Man is so huge, it’ll give you chills.

Van She - Memory Man [zshare] // [ysi]

7. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles

Canadian duo, Crystal Castles are the pioneers of a sick 8-bit gameboy-disco that rules the clubs nowadays. Alice Glass, the girl vocalist, I guess already has some distortion in herself so she fits nicely with the over-distorted screaming-singing and the post-punk pseudo-robotic stuff. The whole album is a lsd-induced nightmare-trip in cyberpunk clubs of the dystopian future where everyone is perverted, every family is dysfunctional and drugs are like food.

Crystal Castles - Reckless [zshare] // [ysi]

6. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires

UK’s Friendly Fires made an amazing debut this year. Why is it better than the Foals’ album? - you could ask. My answer is: it’s more elegant, more diverse, more beautiful and more touching. I usually compare and pair up Friendly Fires with Foals but in this respect they are rather like Van She. Mixture of dance music and shoegaze, atmospheric electronica and indie. These guys make such a great and soulful sound that their place in the list is hardly questionable. The songs reach for the sky and the stars.

Friendly Fires - Jump in the Pool [zshare] // [ysi]

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under bloc party, pop, of montreal, best of 2008, friendly fires, experimental, indie, electro, van she, crystal castles.